Sometimes as humans, we simply like to dissect a thing.
We look at how something works, and if we are the learner type.. you know a curious tinkerer type, we ask, ‘so what goes into that?’
If we’re the entrepreneur personality we want to know how it started, what the demand is, the trend, and the lynchpin; what could make it all fall apart.
Especially when you are in business.
You can’t help but look at others’ businesses when you interact with them; their people, brand, service, and experience. You might even try to lift the hood & look behind the counter at the ingredients & the ‘engine’ of it all. This is normal; we have entire TV shows and series dedicated to these sorts of things and no longer is there a big gap between consumer and business. There are many many services for services for hybrids and for new demands.
Inevitably you start to look at the ingredients that make the thing you’re buying.
“So.. this is just beans, hot water, milk… wait, I could go buy this & do this …and SAVE MONEY!” – haha This is one of those rare times that simple logic is meant to serve us and help us as humans, but actually sorta betrays us. In an effort to understand and ‘crack’ something, we miss the time-saving element and ignore ‘why’ we’re looking to unfurl a process or complex item and do it out of primal instinct. I don’t care that this coffee is $2 and they’ll have it in 2 min, I wanna watch 4k YouTube hours on coffee bean roasting, buy a roaster, and make my own coffee dammit.
“I’m cutting out the middleman!” -says no one in air travel.
“I’m gonna DIY this” – says no one in the OR at the hospital.
That’s because you truly can’t make & fly your own commercial jet or operate on your own brain.
However… thanks to ALL the services (and I’m saying this thankful for them truly)… you technically can recreate your own Subway sandwich, your own Starbucks Latte, make your own denim jeans, and even build your own website, shoot your own video, and so on.
No myth here, you can do these things. 100%! In fact, you might have a better chance than ever thanks to some YouTube channel by an artisan that shows you in 5 minutes what took him/her a degree & 1k hours of trial & error.
Myth: doing it myself, and cutting out the service of others who do this full-time doing it for me, will save me money or time.
Wanna make your own cornhole boards? Great! Knock yourself out! I mean it- you like woodworking? Go for it. Me? I’m going to buy a set and be playing 20 rounds before you (assuming you’ve just taken up woodworking) have started cutting wood. Really feel like Subway’s ‘got ya’ by charging $4 for that 6″ sandwich? Well, go ahead and go to the store, buy all those ingredients and make your own; on MY road trip, I have somewhere to be and would rather not.
Silly metaphors? Sorry, but when people DIY services unrelated to their core business, it IS silly.
I’m of course talking about the myth of cutting out middlemen in business.
That is you have a business. Let’s say that business is lawncare & gardening.
Your service to your client is a cut lawn and a happy customer.
Your goal is to have many of those clients so you build a lawnmower right? Wrong.
You finance 3 of them, use one for yourself and pay 2 others part-time and pay off those lawnmowers in a month vs waiting to save the cash to start. Same with lawn bags, rakes, edgers, and so on- THOSE are not your business. In fact, you find leasing those is the best option in a financial analysis!
Either cutting out the middleman to make/assemble the ingredient or tool, or hiring a full-time dedicated individual to just manage that tool is silly in almost any example, yet the instinct of so many is, “hmm.. we need clients? well, we need marketing, and then I guess we need a full-time in-house marketer!” We at Suited will tell you this is great by the way. You have a key role we can help you get ROI out of by engaging with a team like ours that will actually mobilize that Marketer. But that individual will not be all 10 things you need. Why even hire then? You’re in Tech/Lawncare/Construction/Cosmetics/Pharma/etc. – HIRE for the critical roles you need, or spend on those contractors, not the area you don’t work in day-to-day.
You ‘can’ do a lot of things, but on this one ask why?
Why should I try and take what many services can provide at the fraction of a hire, deliver in a fraction of the time I can or a hire (or 3) can, and try and hire for it and/or DIY it… when I have a business to run?
Ok ok, bravo you did it. You see marketers use websites, and you read up on those. You see the tools we use, how some design works, and met a guy with a DSLR camera & drone… now take a deep breath and stop. Stop dissecting this one as if it’s a good idea for your business to take on. This ‘DIY’ effort to unpack what agencies have ‘packed’ for a reason just kinda makes you look silly. Instead of focusing on the core service/product of your business, you are now chasing individual contractors for various aspects of marketing that one team should manage, or one manager on your team should manage that ‘vendor’, as only part of his/her executive and high-value activity. Instead of pursuing your passion and impacting the market, you’ve just made yourself a project manager over your website & editorial calendar. You just got into a whole separate business within your business!
Suited can help you break this habit, get your time back, see results, AND still be part of your marketing- like you should be! Overseeing from a high-level what pros can do for you while you close deals, take care of your customers, and focus on your business.
